Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy

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D.E. Sweeny, 1826 - Economics - 280 pages
A champion of the new "Classical" economics, Thomas Cooper published his South Carolina College lectures from one of the first full courses in Political Economy taught in America.

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Page 216 - The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.
Page 217 - The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person.
Page 189 - But whether it tends either to increase the general industry of the society, or to give it the most advantageous direction, is not, perhaps, altogether so evident. The general industry of the society can never exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society, must bear a certain...
Page 217 - ... 4. Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state. A tax may either take out or keep out of the pockets of the people a great deal more than it brings into the public treasury, in the four following ways.
Page 6 - It has made each particular nation regard the welfare of its neighbours as incompatible with its own ; hence the reciprocal desire of injuring and impoverishing each other ; and hence that spirit of commercial rivalry which has been the immediate or remote cause of the greater number of modern wars.
Page 258 - In the forming and contracting of these habits. And hence results a rule of life of considerable importance, viz. that many things are to be done and abstained from, solely for the sake of habit.
Page 192 - Whether the advantages which one country has over another be natural or acquired, is in this respect of no consequence. As long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter rather to buy of the former than to make.
Page 189 - Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.
Page 217 - Secondly, it may obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business, which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so.
Page 205 - Not to govern too much. Which, perhaps, would be of more use when applied to trade than in any other public concern. It were therefore to be wished that commerce was as free between all the nations of the world as it is between the several counties of England *; so would all, by mutual communication, obtain more enjoyments. Those counties do not ruin one another by trade; neither would the nations.

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